 Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering RSA Conference 2020 San Francisco, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Hey, welcome back everyone. It's Cube's coverage here in San Francisco, the Moscone Center for RSA Conference 2020. I'm John Furrier, your host. As cybersecurity goes to the next generation, as the new cloud scale, cyber threats are out there. The real impact to companies, business and society will be determined by the industry, this technology and the people. Got a Cube alumni here, General Jaffer, SVP, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development for IronNet, welcome back. Thanks, John, good to be here. Thanks for having us. So it's IronNet, I see General Keith Alexander, and you got a new CEO over there. Phil Walsh, capacity scaler and duo. Knows how to scale up a company. That's right. IronNet's doing really well, the Iron Dome, the vision of collaboration and signaling. Congratulations on your success, what's the quick update? Well look, I mean we have now built the capability to share information across multiple companies, multiple industries with the government in real time at machine speed, really bringing people together, not just creating collective security or collective defense, but also collaborating in real time to defend one another. So you're able to divide and conquer, go after the enemy the same way they come after you and beat them at their own game. So this is the classic case of offense, defense. Most corporations are playing defense, whack a mole, redundant, not a lot of efficiency, a lot of burnout. Exactly. And not a lot of collaboration, but everyone's talking about the who the attackers are and collaborating like a team, right? And you guys talk about this mission. Exactly. This is really the new way to do it, that's the only way to work. It is, and you know you see kids doing it out there when they're playing Fortnite, right? They're collaborating in real time across networks to play a game, right? You can imagine that same construct when it comes to cyber defense, right? There's no reason why one big company and a second big company and a small company can't work together to identify all the threats, see that common threat landscape and then take action on it, trusting one another to take down the pieces they have to focus on and ultimately winning the battle. There's no other way a single company is going to be able to defend itself against a huge nation state that has virtually unlimited resources and virtually unlimited human capital. You've got to come together, defend the cross multiple industries collectively and collaboratively. You know we talked about this last time and I want to revisit this. I think it's super important. I think it's the most important story that's not really being talked about in the industry and that is that we were talking last time about the government protects businesses if someone dropped troops on the ground in your neighborhood, the government would protect you. Digitally that's not happening so there's really no protection for businesses. Do they build their own militia? Do they build their own army? Who's going to be their heat shield? So this is a big conversation and it brings the question, the role of the government, we're going to need a digital air force. We're going to need a digital army, navy, navy seals. We need to have that force and this is going to be a policy issue but in the short term, businesses and individuals are sitting out there being attacked by sophisticated, mission-based teams of hackers and nation-states. Either camouflaging or hiding but attacking still. This is a huge issue. What's going on? Are people talking about this in DC? Well John, look, not enough people are talking about it, right? And forget DC. We need to be talking about out here in the Silicon Valley with all these companies here at the RSA floor and bring up the things that you're bringing up because this is a real problem we're facing as a nation. The Russians aren't coming after one company, one state. They're coming after our entire election infrastructure. They're coming after us as a nation. The Chinese may be coming after one company at a time but their goal is to take our national properties as a nation, repurpose it back home and win the economic game, right? The Iranians, the North Koreans, they're not focused on individual actors but they are coming after individual actors. We can't defend against those things. One man, one woman, one company on an island, one agency, one state. We've got to come together collectively, right? Work state with other states, right? If we're going to defend against the Russians, California might be really good at it. Rhode Island, small states could be real hard to defend against the Russians but if California and Rhode Island come together, here's the threats I see, here's the threats you see, share information, that's great. Then we collaborate on the defense. We work together. You take these threats, I'll take those threats and now we're working as a team, like you said earlier, like those kids do when they're playing Fortnite and now we're changing the game. Now we're really fighting the real fight. When I hear General Keith Alexander talking about his vision with Iron Net and what you guys are doing, I'm inspired because it's simply put, we have a mission to protect our nation, our people and our businesses and he puts it in kind of military terms but in reality it's a simple concept. We're being attacked, defend and attack back. Just basic stuff but to make it work is the sharing. So I got to ask you, first of all, I love his vision, I love what you guys are doing. How real are we? What's the progression? Where are we on the progress bar of that vision? Well, you know, a lot's changed to the last year and a half alone, right? The threat's gotten a lot more real to everybody, right? Used to be that industry would say to us, yeah, we want to share with the government but we want something back for, right? We want them to show us some signal too. Today, industry is like, look, the Chinese are crushing us out there, right? We can beat them at some level but we really need the government to go do its job too. So we'll give you the information we have on an anonymized basis. You do your thing, we're going to keep defending ourselves and if you can give us something back, that's great. So we've now stood up in real time with DHS. We're sharing with them huge amounts of data about what we're seeing across six of the top 10 energy companies, some of the biggest banks, some of the biggest healthcare companies in the country, right, in real time with DHS and more to come on that, more to come with other government agencies and more to come with some more partners across the globe, right? Partners like those in Japan, Singapore, Eastern Europe, right? Our allies in the Middle East, they're all on the front lines of this threat. We can bring them better capability. They can help us see what's coming at us in the future because as those enemies out there are testing their weapons in those local areas. I want to get your thoughts on the capital markets because obviously financing is critical and you're seeing successful venture capital formulas like ForgePoint, C5, really specialized funds on cyber but not classic industry formation sectors. Like it's not just security industry, they're taking a much more broader view because there's a policy implication. There's an organizational behavior. There's technology up and down the stack. So it's a much broad investment thesis. What's your view of that? Because do you see that as the formula? And if so, what is this new aperture, this new lens of investing to be successful in funding companies? Well, look, it's really important what companies like ForgePoint are doing venture capital funds, right? Don Dixon, Albertiapaz, Will Linn, they're really innovating here. They've created a largest cybersecurity focused fund. They just closed it recently in the world, right? And so they're really focused on this industry. Partners like C5, Kleiner, Perkins, Ted Schlein, Andre Pinar doing really great work at this area. Also, really important capital formation, right? And let's not forget other funds, Ron Gula, right, the founder of Tenable, starting his own fund out there in DC in the DMV area. There's a lot of innovation happening in this country and the funding on it's critical. Now look, the reality is the easy money is not going to be here forever, right? So the question is what comes when that inevitable step back? We don't, nobody likes to talk about it. The guy who bets on the other side of the craps game in Vegas, right? You don't want to be that guy, but let's be real. I mean, that day will eventually come. And the question is how do you bring some of these things together, right? Bring these various pieces together to really create long term strategies, right? And that's, I think, what's really innovative about what Don and Albert are doing is they're building portfolio companies across a range of areas to create sort of an end to end capability, right? Andre's doing things like that, Ted's doing stuff like that. It's a, that's really innovation, the VC market, right? And we're seeing increased collaboration, VC to PE. It's looking a lot more similar, right? And now we're seeing innovative vehicles, like SPACs that are taking companies public in sort of the reverse manner, right? There's a lot of interesting stuff happening there with Hank Thomas and the guys at Chief Cyber Ventures. So a lot of really cool stuff going on in the financing world. Opportunities for young, smart entrepreneurs to really move out in this field and to do it now when money's still, still relatively easy to come by. So there's innovation on the capital market side, which is awesome. Let's talk about the ecosystem. Every single market sector that I've been over my 30 year career has been about a successful entrepreneurship, check capital to formation of partnerships. Okay, you're in the iron net front line as part of that ecosystem. How do you see the ecosystem formula developing? Is it the same kind of model? Is it a little bit different? What's your vision of the ecosystem? Look, I mean, partnerships channel, it's critical to every cybersecurity company. You can't scale on your own. You've got to do it through others, right? I was at a crowd strike event the other day, 91% of the revenue comes from the channel. That's an amazing number. You think about that, right? And so you look at who we're trying to talk about partnering with. We're talking about some of the big cloud players like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, right? On the vendor side, pardon me, Splunk, crowd strike. Some of these big players, right? We want to build with them, right? We want to work with them because there's a story to tell here, right? When we work together, the ecosystem itself is defended stronger. There's no anonymity here, right? It's all we bring especially, you bring especially, you work together, you run out and go get the business and make companies safer. At the end of the day, it's all about protecting the ecosystem. What about the big cloud player? Because there's two big megatrends. Obviously cloud computing at scale, multi-cloud on the horizon, hybrid's kind of the bridge between single public cloud and multi-cloud. And then AI, you got the big things that are generate, will be multiple generations of innovation and value creation. What's your vision on the impact of the big waves that are coming? Well, look, I mean, cloud computing is the right change in the world, right? Today, you can deploy capability and have a super computer at your fingertips in minutes, right? You can also secure that in minutes because you can update it in real time as the machine is functioning. You have a problem, take it down, and then you can just throw up a new virtual machine. These are amazing innovations that are creating more and more capability out there in the industry. It's game-changing. We're happy, we're glad to be part of that. We're glad to be helping defend that new amazing ecosystem, partnering with companies like Microsoft and AWS. Jamil, you know, I'm really impressed that you're a technical acumen. You got a good grasp of the industry, but also you're really strong on the societal impact, policy formulation side of government and business. So I want to get your thoughts for the young kids out there that are going to school, trying to make sense of the chaos that's going on in the world, whether it's DC political theater or the tech theater, big tech, and in general, all the things with coronavirus, all this stuff going on. It's a pretty crazy time, but a lot of work has to start getting done that are new problems. What is your advice of someone who's been through the multiple waves to the young kids who have to figure out what path to take? What problems are out there? What things can people get their arms around to work on, to specialize in? What's your thoughts and expertise on that? Well John, thanks for the question. What I really like about that question is, we're talking about what the future looks like, and here's what I think the future looks like. It's all about taking risk. Talking about a lot of these young kids out there today, they're worried about how the world looks, right? Will America still be strong? Can we get through this hard time of going through in DC with the world challenging us? And what I could say is, this country has never been stronger. We may have our own troubles internally, but we are risk takers, and we always win, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how bad it gets, right? Risk taking is something that's built in the American blood. It's our founders came here, taking a risk leaving England to come here, and we've succeeded the last 200 years. There is no question in my mind that trend will continue. So the young people out there, I don't know what the future has to hold. I don't know what the new technology is going to be, but you're going to invent it, and if you don't take the risks, we're not succeed as a nation, and that's what I think is key. Most people worry that if they take too many risks, they might not succeed, right? But the reality is most people you see around here at this convention, they all took risks to be here, and even when they had trouble, they got up, they dust themselves off, and they won. And I believe that everybody in this country, that's what's amazing about this nation is, we had this opportunity to try, if we fail, to get up again and succeed. So fail fast, fail often, and crush it. You know, some of the best innovations have come from times where you had the Cold War, you had times where the hippie revolution spawned the computer revolution. So you have the culture of America, which is not about regulation and stunt and growth, you had risk taking, you had entrepreneurship, but yet enough freedom for business to operate to solve new challenges. And to me, the biggest imperative in my mind is, this next generation has to solve a lot of those new questions. What side of the street does the self-driving cars go on? I see bike lanes in San Francisco, more congestion, more cry, all the stuff's going on. AI could be a great enabler for that. Cyber security, a direct threat to our country and global geopolitical landscape. These are big problems. State and local governments, they're not really tech savvy, you don't really have a lot of IT. So what do they do? How do they serve their constituents? You know, John, these are really important and hard questions, but what we know, what has made technology so successful in America? What's made it large, successful is the government has stayed out of the way, right? Industry and innovators have had a chance to work together and do stuff and change the world, right? You look at California, you know, one of the reasons California is so successful and Silicon Valley is so dynamic, you can move between jobs and we don't enforce non-compete agreements, right? Because you can switch jobs and you can go to that next higher value target, right? That shows the value of innovation, creating innovation. Now, there's a real tendency to say when we're faced with challenges, well, the government ought to step in and solve that problem, right? The Silicon Valley and what California's done, what technology's done, is a story about the government staying out and let innovators innovate and that's a real opportunity for this nation. We got to keep on down that path, even when it seems like the easier answer is, come on in DC, come on in Sacramento, fix this problem for us. We have demonstrated as a country that Americans and individuals are good at solving these problems. We should allow them to do that and innovate. Yeah, one of my passions is to kind of use technology and media and communities to get to the truth faster. A lot of access to smart minds out there. But the old minds, young minds, young minds, oh, it's all there, got to get the data out and that's going to be a big thing. But one of the things that's changing is the dark arts of smear campaigns. This is a story at Bloomberg today. Oracle reveals funding for dark money group fighting big tech, internet accountability project, and so the classic astroturfing, you got the Jedi contract, Google lawsuit with Java. So Oracle's in the middle of all this, but using them as an illustrative point. The lawyers seem to be running the kingdom right now. I know you're an attorney, so I don't want to be covering you. I'm a recovery lawyer, John McLean, recovery lawyer. I don't want to be offensive, but entrepreneurship cannot be stifled by regulation. Sarbanes Oxley slowed down a lot of the IPO, shifts to the later stage capital, so regulation is never a good thing. But also, some of these little tactics out in the shadows are going to be revealed. What's the new way to get this straightened out in your mind? Well, look, in my view, the best solution for problematic speech or problematic people is more speech, right? Let's shine a light on it, right? If there are people doing shady stuff, let's talk about it, let's out it, let's have it out in the open, let's fight it out. At the end of the day, what America's really about is smart ideas winning. And so let's get the ideas out there. You know, we spent a lot of time right now, we're under attack by the Russians when it comes to our elections, right? We spent a lot of time carping at one another, one party versus another party, the president versus that person, this person at the intelligence committee versus that person at the intelligence committee. It's crazy when the real threat is from the outside. We need to get past all that noise, right? And really get to the next thing, which is we're fighting a foreign enemy on this front. We need to face that enemy down and stop killing each other with this nonsense. And turn the lights on, I'm a big believer of if something can be exposed, you can talk about it, why is it happening, and then this consequences with that, reputation, et cetera. You got it. Jim Hill, thanks for coming on the queue, really appreciate your insight. I want to just ask you one final question. As you look at the industry right now, what is the most important story that people are talking about, and what is the most important story that people should be talking about? Yeah, well look, I think the one story that's out there a lot, right, is what's going on in our politics, what's going on in our elections. You know, Chris Krebs at DHS has been out here this week talking a lot about the threat that our elections face and the importance about states working with one another and states working with the federal government to defend the nation when it comes to these elections in November, right? We need to get ahead of that, right? The reality is it's been four years since 2016, we need to do more, that's a key issue. Going forward, what are the Iranians and North Koreans think about next? They haven't hit us recently, we know it's coming, we got to get ahead of that, we got to come together as nation and make us that threat too. Jameel, great to have you on the queue as always, great insight, thanks for coming on and sharing your perspective. I'm John Furrier here at RSA in San Francisco for the CUBE coverage, thanks for watching.